is mythical, the inner nature of holiness, self-denial, and asceticism.'

The other way Schopenhauer seeks to make clear what he means by denial of will to live is by contrasting it with the impulse of suicide. This, he says, ' is so far from being a denial of will to live, that it is a phenomenon due to strong affirmation of will.' The denial of will essentially means 'the shunning not of the sufferings but of the pleasures of life.' The self-murderer really wills to live; he wills the unimpeded existence and affirmation of the body.' Only external circumstances do not allow of his gaining his end. Hence his misery and his flight from an existence which has become insupportable. Besides, the suicide is taking thought for the individual only, whereas complete denial of will involves a consideration of the species also.

On the other hand, Schopenhauer allows that a gradual undermining of health and a hastening of death by a voluntary process of abstention and self-mortification is of the very nature of denial of will to live. It appears,' he says, 'that the total denial of will to live can reach the stage in which there fails even the will that is needful to the maintenance of the vegetable functions of the body through the reception of nutriment.' Such a fully resigned ascetic differs toto cælo from the suicide, since he ceases to live solely because he has wholly ceased to will. Death by hunger is the only conceivable form which springs out of the denial of will, since all other modes must involve the design of shortening the pangs of life; that is to say, a degree of the affirmation of will.

Schopenhauer speaks of this state of non-willing, which he regards as the highest attainable possession of our race, as one of peace, if not of quiet joy. In truth, he describes,

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this condition in much the same terms as the Stoics were wont to describe that of the wise man.

He in whom the denial of will to live is brought about, however poor, joyless, and full of wants his condition may be when seen from without, is full of inner joyousness, and true heavenly rest. It is not the restless impulse of life, the jubilant joy, which has violent suffering as its necessary antecedent or consequent, such as makes up the course of life of the bon vivant (lebenslustiger Mensch); but it is an imperturbable peace, a deep repose, an inner cheerfulness, a condition which cannot be seen without the greatest longing, being that which is alone right, infinitely surpassing all besides' (i. p. 461).

Still, in spite of this promise of a final peace, the outlook on the world and life which Schopenhauer's whole philosophy affords us is sufficiently dark. Life is incurably bad, and is not to be accepted on any conditions. The one remedy for human woes is to abandon life, to reduce ourselves to passive spectators of the world, caring nothing for its interests, or its endeavours. And though Schopenhauer describes this perfectly neutral condition as one of peace, he admits that it can only be reached and maintained by dint of long and painful struggle.

Nor is this all; it seems to follow from Schopenhauer's conception of will that no number of such denials as he here describes can have any effect on the will as a whole. He is never weary of telling us that it is the unalterable nature of will to strive, and in one place he says that the visible world, being but the mirror of the real world, must accompany it as inseparably as the shadow the body which projects it. He tells us this, moreover, when arguing against the fear of death as though this were the destruction.

of anything more than a phenomenon (i. 324). How this constant activity of the will as a whole is to be reconciled with a quiescence of will in the individual (which is, after all, the reality itself in one of its manifestations) I do not propose to consider here.

Pessimism of the most pronounced character is thus the conclusion of our author's line of thought, nor does he omit to tell us this explicitly. In a characteristic denunciation of optimism which cuts so odd a figure that one is inclined to look on it as irony,' he expressly affirms the direct and logical contrary of Leibnitz's well-known proposition. The world is the worst among all possible ones. For the possible is that which can actually exist and persist. Now the present world is so arranged as just to be able to exist; were it a little worse, it could no longer subsist at all. 'The world is as bad as it possibly can be in order to exist anyhow.' In proof of this rather astounding declaration, he traces what he considers would be the consequences if the actions of the destructive natural forces were slightly more terrible than they actually are.

Yet it looks as if the human mind were unable to frame a theory of life absolutely bare of consolation, and even Schopenhauer may be found offering a kind of dreary solace to those who are likely to be dismayed by his doleful story. He also, no less than the optimist Leibnitz, will have his theodicy, and a curious thing this is. Since all life, all the visible world, is the direct product of will, and this will is free and almighty, it alone is responsible for the evil of existence. Thus there reigns an eternal justice in the world, the punishment being so bound up with the crime that both are one and the same. Consequently there is no room for complaint. Though we are all something

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which ought not to be, yet the perfect adjustment of punishment to crime stamps the world with a moral rightness which silences all our vain protests."

Schopenhauer may be said to drop us another crumb of consolation when he tells us that his doctrine tends to remove the fear of death. Death, he says, only touches the phenomenal part of us, not our inmost reality. This, which is will, persists in spite of all the coming and passing of individual life. Again, the terrors of death rest for the most part on the false appearance that at that moment the ego disappears while the world remains. The opposite, however, is rather the truth: the world disappears, whereas the inmost kernel of the ego, the bearer and begetter of that subject in whose representation alone the world had its existence, persists.'

These considerations, together with those of the occasional delight attainable in the contemplation of art and the repose enjoyed when the will ceases to throb with unquenchable desire, are the only relief to the blackness of Schopenhauer's picture of life, and it will be seen at once that they do not amount to much. The world is still the worst world possible, even though out of this worst we may be able, thanks to an unquenchable instinct, to squeeze a drop or two of consolatory reflection.

CHAPTER V.

THE GERMAN PESSIMISTS. SCHOPENHAUER'S SUCCESSORS:

HARTMANN, ETC.

SCHOPENHAUER's philosophy remained for some time without much visible effect on the minds of his countrymen, the influence of Hegel being still too strong. Of late years, however, Schopenhauer's writings have received a compensatory amount of attention, and the pessimist seems now to have established something like a school in Germany.

Among the disciples of this school, few, if any, are content to accept their master's system in the shape in which he left it. They all depart more or less from some of Schopenhauer's leading positions. In some cases this divergence touches the character of the pessimism which Schopenhauer deduces from his first principles; in other cases this element is retained in its integrity.

Among those who represent Schopenhauer's characteristic estimate of the world, and who accept without qualification his condemnation of existence, Julius Bahnsen stands out conspicuously. Nay, it may be said that this writer vies with his master in his delineation of the misery of life.

1 Bahnsen's views are to be found in a little work entitled 'Zur Philosophie der Geschichte.' This is principally directed against Hartmann's rehabilitation of the Hegelian factor of intellect in the worldorder.